In the early 1980s, an unusual legal argument, combining civil rights,
antitrust, and contract laws, persuaded a federal court in Texas to disband a
private army of white supremacists and safeguard a vulnerable community of
Vietnamese refugees.

America's involvement in the Vietnam War had left millions of Vietnam's
civilians dead and its land in ruins. A sustained, indiscriminate campaign of
bombardment and depopulation led Martin Luther King, Jr. to observe in 1967:
"We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and
the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. . . . We have
corrupted their women and children and killed their men." When the United
States finally withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, the Hanoi government sought to
redress its wartime grievances and to restore order by persecuting its wartime
adversaries. Many of the South Vietnamese who had fought alongside the Americans
came under pressure to flee to the countryside or to leave the country
altogether. In early 1978, the Communists extended their repression to the
ethnic Chinese of both North and South Vietnam.

Between 1975 and 1983, thousands of Vietnamese refugees crowded into
unseaworthy boats bound for Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and the
Phillipines, and faced storms, starvation, disease, and piracy in the South
China Sea. Statistical data suggest that half of the Vietnamese "boat
people" died at sea. At a June 1979 United Nations conference on the
growing humanitarian crisis, the United States, Australia, Canada and France
agreed to resettle a total of nearly 700,000 Vietnamese refugees.

In the United States, immigration agents asked Congress to scatter the
incoming refugees across the country in order to prevent "ghettoism."
This resettlement policy led to the creation of Vietnamese communities in states
such as Texas that had relatively little previous experience with Asian
Americans. In Texas, many of the new arrivals, facing language barriers and
having little capital, found opportunity in the Gulf Coast shrimping industry.
"We like the weather, we like the shrimping, we like a chance to start our
own businesses," one immigrant explained. Vietnamese fishermen and their
families pooled their savings and began to buy their own boats.

Many white fishermen in the area tried to ward off the competitive threat.
Vietnamese shrimpers found that they could purchase their boats only at a
considerable premium. "They got hustled pretty good," said an American
shrimper. The American fishermen pressured most of the local bait shops to
boycott the Vietnamese shrimpers. They also successfully lobbied in the state
legislature for restrictions on new shrimp boat licenses.

Undeterred, the Vietnamese fishermen thrived in the shrimping industry by
working longer and harder than their white counterparts. "They put all
their children and aunts and uncles on the boats, and if they make $10 in profit
a day, they're ahead," said another white fisherman. Some whites felt that
they were being forced to lower their standard of living to that of the new
arrivals. Many presumed, falsely, that their Vietnamese competitors were being
subsidized by welfare grants from the government. Others considered the
Vietnamese fishermen's aggressive practices, such as following their
competitors' boats to a catch, and unloading their boats across other boats'
decks, to be unethical and unfair.

The changing economics of shrimping made the competition even fiercer. The
increase in fishing activity in Galveston Bay reduced the available catch, while
a rise in imports kept wholesale prices low. Faced with this profit squeeze,
many longtime shrimpers went out of business. Others tried to compete by
streamlining and cutting costs. Some, however, took more drastic measures.

Between 1979 and 1981, several Vietnamese-owned shrimp boats were burned in
the Galveston Bay area - fires that arson investigators later determined had
been intentionally set. There were also reports of snipers firing shots across
the bows of Vietnamese boats. On the night of August 3, 1979, in the town of
Seadrift, several Vietnamese boats were burned and a vacant Vietnamese house was
firebombed, and a fistfight between white and Vietnamese fishermen ended with
the fatal shooting of a white crabber. Two Vietnamese were tried for murder and
acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

The incident caused many whites to mistrust the entire Vietnamese community.
Some mistook the refugees for the North Vietnamese communists they had fought
and fled. Others understood that the refugees had been America's wartime allies,
but still felt that they should be forced to leave the area. "There's too
many of them," a white fisherman declared, "and there's not enough
room for them and there's going to be lots of hard feelings if they don't get
some of them out of here and teach the ones that they leave how to act and how
to get along. I think they ought to be put on a reservation somewhere or . . .
in a compound to teach them our laws and our ways, the way we live, our courtesy
as a people."

On February 14, 1981, a group of white fishermen organized a rally against
the Vietnamese fishermen. Also attending the rally were Louis Beam, Grand Dragon
of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and thirteen uniformed members of the
Klan's military arm, the 2,500-member Texas Emergency Reserve. Beam told the
white fishermen that he would give the government until May 15, the start of the
shrimping season, to remove the Vietnamese fishermen from the area, and that if
this was not accomplished, the Klan would "take laws into our own
hands." Later, Beam also demonstrated how to burn a boat, and issued an
invitation to those present: "The Ku Klux Klan is more than willing to
select out of the ranks of American fishermen some of your more hardy souls and
send them through our training camps. And when you come out of that, they'll be
ready for the Vietnamese." The rally was extensively covered by the local
news media.

The Klan took its message directly to the Vietnamese fishermen on March 15. A
group of armed, hooded Klansmen and Texas Emergency Reserve members, accompanied
by a news reporter, conducted a "boat parade" in the waters near
Seabrook, stopping along the way to display their weapons and to make
threatening gestures. An effigy of a Vietnamese fisherman was hung from the rear
deck. The parade was seen by Vietnamese fishermen and their families on the
docks and other boats in the channel.

About Morris Dees

As a young boy in Alabama, Morris Dees learned from his father to
respect the African Americans who worked on the family's farm. But in
1960, when Dees graduated from law school, he was more interested in
building his small book-publishing business than in fighting for racial
equality.

In time, Dees became increasingly involved in the emerging civil rights
movement. He donated cash to help rebuild the Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham after a 1963 bombing killed four young girls there,
and drove volunteers to Selma to join the 1965 march for voting rights.

After a long night of soul-searching in 1967, Dees sold his company for
$6 million and began a full-time career in civil rights law. In 1971, with
partner Joe Levin, Dees co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center in
Montgomery. The center supports a team of attorneys who specialize in
lawsuits involving civil rights violations and racially motivated crimes.

The center has recently gained national attention for its strategy of
attacking white supremacist organizations through their treasuries. In
1987, the center helped the family of an African American teenager lynched
in Mobile, Ala. to win a $7 million judgment against United Klans of
America, bankrupting that organization. The center also won a $12.5
million verdict against the White Aryan Resistance in 1990, a $37.8
million verdict against the South Carolina Christian Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan in 1998, and a $6.3 million verdict against the Aryan Nations in
2000.

The center also supports various national education efforts, including
reports on the activities of extremist groups and the incidence of hate
crimes, and providing teaching materials on the civil rights movement and
ongoing struggles against discrimination. In 1989, six thousand people
attended the dedication of the national Civil Rights Memorial, which was
erected in front of the center's offices. The monument, designed by Maya
Lin, records the names of 40 people who lost their lives during the
movement and bears one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite quotations
from the Book of Amos: ". . . until justice rolls down like waters
and righteousness like a mighty stream." Morris Dees and the Southern
Poverty Law Center have marshaled the power of the law and the legitimacy
of the courts to continue Dr. King's legacy.

In Montgomery, Alabama, Morris Dees, a civil rights attorney, was monitoring
the Klan's activity. He and his law partner Joseph Levin had founded the
Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971 to enforce the new laws and rights that had
been won by the civil rights movement (see sidebar). Dees was convinced that he
could halt the Klan's activities in Galveston Bay by proving in court that Beam
and his associates had broken the law.

On April 16, 1981, Dees filed a wide-ranging lawsuit on behalf of the
Vietnamese fishermen against the Klan, Beam, and various other Klansmen and
alleged conspirators in the federal district court for the Southern District of
Texas. The Vietnamese fishermen sought a court order to prevent the Klan's
threatened campaign of intimidation and violence during the 1981 shrimping
season. As in many civil rights lawsuits, the plaintiffs pursued claims under
the federal civil rights statutes, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to
the United States Constitution, and the common law of contracts and torts. Dees
also alleged that the Klan had violated two laws that have rarely been
considered part of the civil rights arsenal: the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and
an even older Texas statute prohibiting the operation of private armies.

The judge assigned to the case, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, had been appointed
by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. She was the first African American in Texas
and the third African American woman in the nation to serve in the federal
judiciary. After learning that Judge McDonald was an African American, Beam
asked her to disqualify herself for bias, referring to her as a "Negress"
and citing the prejudice of "your people against the Klansmen." Noting
that a defendant "is not entitled to a judge of his choice, he is only
entitled to a fair and impartial judge," Judge McDonald denied Beam's
request. Judge McDonald would later reveal that she and her family had received
death threats and one-way tickets to Africa while she was handling the case.

During a highly publicized four-day trial, several of the Vietnamese
fishermen, facing into an audience that included several robed Klansmen, took
the stand to testify. Judge McDonald also heard testimony from the defendants,
law enforcement officials, and the reporter who had accompanied the Klan on the
March 15 boat ride. On May 14, the last day of trial, the court issued a
preliminary injunction prohibiting the defendants from threatening,
intimidating, or harassing the Vietnamese fishermen or inciting others to do
likewise.

The shrimping season began the next day. Dees, rising early to watch the
boats leave the harbor, saw flashes of sunlight reflecting off the badges of the
U.S. marshals who had been assigned to protect the Vietnamese fishermen. "I
felt proud, not only to be a lawyer, but I felt proud to be an American,"
Dees said. The Vietnamese worked all summer without harassment from the Klan.

In July, Judge McDonald issued a written opinion explaining the legal
reasoning behind her decision to issue the May 14 injunction. She decided that
the Vietnamese fishermen's claims under the civil rights laws were
"clearly" supported by evidence that the Klan had deprived the
plaintiffs of their basic rights under Texas contract law and federal antitrust
law.

Judge McDonald found that the trial evidence showed that the Klan had
interfered with their rights under Texas law to negotiate and enter into
contracts. She concluded that the Klan had "acted intentionally to impede
and prevent the plaintiffs from pursuing their lawful occupation," and that
as a result, many of the Vietnamese fishermen had agreed to sell their boats or
had been discouraged from shrimping.

Judge McDonald's opinion extensively addressed the plaintiffs' claims under
Section 1 of the Sherman Act. That statute prohibits "[e]very contract,
combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of
trade or commerce among the several States." The federal antitrust statutes
are typically invoked to challenge anticompetitive business transactions, but
Judge McDonald found them applicable to the Klan's conduct.

"It is well established that joint collaborative
action designed to eliminate a class of competitors ready and able to
compete is a violation of section 1 of the Sherman Act. Section 1 has been
held to apply to an unlawful boycott occasioned by coercion, threats and
intimidation. Moreover, courts have found that foreclosing and eliminating
competitors from a substantial portion of the market is per se illegal. .
. .

"[T]he evidence . . . reveal[ed] that the defendants agreed to
engage in conduct which had the stated intent of eliminating a class of
competitors from the commercial fishing business in Galveston Bay. This
type of anticompetitive conduct is not likely to be condoned under Section
1 of the Sherman Act."

Judge McDonald cited the U.S. Supreme Court's statement that a violation of
Section 1 of the Sherman Act may be established by proof of "either an
unlawful purpose or an anticompetitive effect." The Vietnamese fishermen
had alleged that the Klan had attempted to intimidate them into selling off
their boats with the purpose and effect of reducing competition in the shrimping
market in the Kemah-Seabrook area. Judge McDonald found from the trial evidence
that the defendants had "agreed to engage in conduct which had the stated
intent of eliminating a class of competitors from the commercial fishing
business in Galveston Bay." She held that there was sufficient proof of an
unlawful purpose and an anticompetitive effect to support the grant of a
preliminary injunction. In August, without objection from the Klan, the court
made the injunction permanent.

In March 1982, Judge McDonald heard oral arguments on the remaining issue of
whether the Klan's military operations violated the state's prohibition on
private armies. The Texas statute prohibits individuals from associating as a
military company or organization and from parading in public with firearms in
any city or town. The Klan argued that their military activities were a
legitimate exercise of their right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.
Judge McDonald, however, found that Texas's ban on private armies was consistent
with the Second Amendment's purpose of allowing states to maintain a
"well-regulated militia." On June 9, 1982, the court issued a
permanent injunction ordering the Texas Emergency Reserve to disband and
prohibiting the Klan from maintaining military organizations, conducting
military training, and parading in public with firearms. The injunction was
posted in conspicuous locations throughout the Kemah-Seabrook area.

In recent years, the federal courts have limited the ability of private
plaintiffs to bring antitrust cases under the Sherman Act and made it harder to
prove that a defendant's actions had an anticompetitive effect. Generally, the
federal courts have also narrowed their use of injunctions to enforce the civil
rights laws. Thus, even though Dees's unorthodox strategy of using business laws
to provide the necessary legal support for a civil rights injunction succeeded
in this case, it is unclear whether the same approach would prevail today.